Reshma Modi

Edward Rochester is the representative character of English gentry in Jane Eyre. His importance is in the way that he gains his fortune, and the results of those actions, that sets up the book's apparently romantic story. While it is made evident in the book by him that his being a plantation owner and slave owner is the doing of his father and brother, not him. It is his slave holder status that gives Rochester his personality though. Unfortunately, he lives and treats those around him as if he was on his plantation. It is in the way he treats Bertha and Jane that this becomes most evident. Rochester's language towards Jane, and both language and behavior towards Bertha is most revealing in this matter.

Edward Rochester as the younger son of his father's house, did not receive anything from his father. Since his father "could not bear the idea of dividing his estate. . . yet as little could he endure that a son of his should be a poor man," he conspired to send Edward to Spanish Town, Jamaica in order for his to marry Miss.Mason (343; ch. 27). The purpose of this scheme was so that he could "be provided for by a wealthy marriage" (343; ch. 27). Four years after the marriage takes place, mostly out of his inexperience about love, and "blindness of youth" (343; ch. 27), the doctors discover that his wife Bertha Mason was mad. At this time Rochester brings her back to Thornfield Hall and locks her up in the third story and hires Grace Poole to look after her.

By this time though he has come to understand what he is, and that is a man of power and a slave holder, and this frame of mind never leaves him. Upon first meeting Jane, this attitude is the most expressed. Robert Kendrick suggests that by asking Jane "'whose house is this,'" and "'Do you know Mr. Rochester?'" (130; ch. 12). Rochester "is asking Jane to participate in the dominant narrative which authorizes him as the master. . . that his 'mastery' is only the result of his being recognized by a believing audience of 'servants'" (Kendrick 247). During his first conversations with Jane he further enforces his position over her when he tells her to leave "superiority out of the question then, you must still agree to receive my orders now and then, without being piqued or hurt by the tone of command" (153; ch. 14). It can be seen here that whether or not other see him as a superior or not, he should be allowed to give orders without the person receiving them feeling hurt.

After his position has been established, he often talks to Jane in the light that she is one of his slaves, and she responds similarly to him. When Jane must go back to Gateshead, Rochester is afraid that she may not come back, so he asks for nine out of the ten pounds of traveling expense back from her. When she refuses his request, he responds to her in explicitly racist terms by calling her "'Little niggard'" (253; ch. 21). This being an obviously derogatory reference to her being a black slave. At the time of her return, when she knows that Rochester is to be married to Blanche Ingram, Jane acknowledges and accepts her position beneath him by saying that "I knew there would be pleasure in meeting my master again; even though broken by the fear that he was so soon to cease to be my master" (275; ch. 22). Her language is reflective of both the slave on the auctioning block, who realizes that she is about to be sold, and has no guarantee that her new master will be as good to her, and the myth about the "good slave master." The latter being a contradictory term, because by the nature of the definition of slavery, there is no such thing as a good slave owner. It is also at this time that their relationship progresses to the point of a engagement, by Rochester revealing that he had only used Blanche to make Jane jealous.

Even in the way that Rochester asks her to marry him, he leaves her no choice of whether she wants to be free or not, he asks her "'Will you be mine?'" and replies for her by telling her to "'Say yes, quickly'" (286; ch. 23). Throughout the engagement, Rochester continues to make changes in Jane's life that she is neither familiar or comfortable with, and without asking her, much as a slaves had no control over their life. One such experience is the way in which Rochester renames her "Janet," an act expressly reminiscent of the way in which newly arrived black slaves were given proper "Christian names" by their masters as a way to take away any former identity they had (281; ch. 23). Second, when Rochester tries to make her buy all new clothes, and look pretty. Jane's response is one that also reflects how the black slaves were gives cotton rags to wear, not their traditional African tribal cloths: "'And then you won't know me, sir; and I shall not be your Jane Eyre any longer, but an ape in a harlequin's jacket,- a jay in borrowed plumes'" (291; ch. 24). At the end of the engagement, Jane describes his attitude when she looks up and meets his eyes: "He smiled; and I thought his smile was such as a sultan might, in a blissful and find moment, bestow on a slave his gold and gems had enriches" (301; ch. 24). She makes it quite clear here that she resents his attitude, not because she minds beings inferior to him as a wife, but because her nature of plainness caused her "annoyance and degradation" grew with every item he bought her (301; ch. 24). In fact at this same time, he tries to lower her to the status of being his "seraglio," a role which she refuses to accept. Rochester's attitude towards her explicitly connect "his Byronic imperiousness with the image of 'Oriental despotism,'" (Perrerra 80) another form in which he would be master and she would be a slave. Finally, when Jane finds herself in the odd situation of being Rochester's second wife, she says of her feelings that they "struck with subtle doom, such as in night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt" (330; ch. 26). Slavery is brought up here by being represented by the Jews who, because of Passover, were set free from bondage by the Pharaoh. When the date of the original publication of Bronte's novel is seen as being 1847, after the colonial slaves were set free, Jane's statement can be seen to mean that just as the Egyptians suffered for having slaves, so too will the English. It can also be inferred that the feels as the Jews did, upon being freed from their situation.

Opposed to Jane's simple lifestyle and nature, Bertha Mason is the daughter of "Mr Mason, a West India planter and merchant," and as such was raised in a situation were she never wanted for anything, as went to "parties, splendidly dressed" (343; ch. 27). Despite this, Bertha is treated and talked about as a slave by Rochester, even more so than Jane. In his first reference to her, while he is proposing to Jane, Bertha is mentioned indirectly as a "West Indian insect" (280; ch. 23). Indeed Rochester does not even see Bertha as a human being, only an insect which he has to keep under his control. Rochester applies to her the term "Creole," and the stereotype that goes along with this term is also applied to her and extended to her family:

Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family; -idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a man woman and drunkard!--as I found out after I had wed the daughter: for they were silent on family secrets before. Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points. (326; ch. 26)

His language here associates her drinking problem and her madness not only as something that happened to her, but as something she inherited from her mother. Furthermore, by associating these characteristics with the family, he associates Bertha with "two of the most common stereotypes associated with blacks in the nineteenth century" (Meyer 253). Another way in which Rochester treats Bertha as a slave is the way in which he "'safely lodged her in that third story room, of whose secret inner cabinet she has not for ten years made a wild beast's den-a goblin's cell'" (348; ch. 27). Much as the slaves would have lived in a cabins the size of a "cabinet," Bertha too is locked up, and in this situation her mental condition is allowed to get worse, with no help whatsoever.

Edward Rochester is not only associated with the slave master, but also the slave, when he discusses were Jane would substitute for his "seraglio." At this point though, it seems obvious that this connection, is not so much his being a slave, as Jane's refusal to "'stand. . . and inch in the stead of a seraglio. . . so don't consider me [Jane] an equivalent for one'" (301-302; ch. 24). It is only to deter him from treating her as a black slave, as opposed to his white, English wife, that she tells him that she he will himself "fettered amongst our hands; nor will I. . . consent to cut your bonds till you have signed a charter," which would allow her to be free (302; ch. 24). Indeed, Mr. Rochester is the "immediate manifestation and enforcer of the network of patriarchal codes" (Kendrick 235). In fact, he plays this role of the patriarch so well that it always "remains the same; metropolitan Englishman in Jamaica, eligible county landowner, or rich employer, he is always the master" (Perrera 94). It is not until he falls from the roof Thornfield, and looses his patriarchal position by becoming dependent on others, that he actually treats anyone around him as a person. This is most evident when Jane returns to him at the end of the novel. At this point Jane claims that she is an "'independent woman now'" indicating that she was free from him, and had come back of her own accord (483; ch. 37). Rochester now realizes that he needs her, that "'all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence,'" because he literally cannot go beyond the walls of his house without her (488; ch. 37). In this case he is being taken care of by John and Mary, two old servants who are obviously not English, and probably black. Another representation that his old situation of him being the master is gone, because these two obviously took care of him, and he could not get along without them.